Rich Skrenta
Rich Skrenta | |
---|---|
entrepreneur | |
Known for | Creating blekko and elk cloner |
Richard J. Skrenta Jr. (born June 6, 1967) is an American computer programmer and
Early life and education
Skrenta Jr. was born in Pittsburgh on June 6, 1967. In 1982, at age 15, as a high school student at Mt. Lebanon High School, Skrenta wrote the Elk Cloner virus that infected Apple II computers. It is widely believed to have been one of the first large-scale self-spreading personal computer viruses ever created.[2]
In 1989, Skrenta graduated with a B.A. in computer science from Northwestern University.[3]
Career
Between 1989 and 1991, Skrenta worked at
In 1989, Skrenta started working on a multiplayer simulation game. In 1994, it was launched under the name Olympia as a pay-for-play
Between 1991 and 1995, Skrenta worked at Unix System Labs, and from 1996 to 1998 with IP-level encryption at Sun Microsystems. He later left Sun and became one of the founders of DMOZ. He stayed on board after the Netscape acquisition, and continued to work on the directory as well as Netscape Search, AOL Music, and AOL Shopping.[citation needed]
After his stint at AOL, Skrenta went on to cofound
In 2005, Skrenta and his fellow cofounders sold a 75% share of Topix to a newspaper consortium made up of
In the late 2000s, Skrenta headed the startup company
In 2015, IBM acquired both the Blekko company and search engine for their Watson computer system.[9]
Skrenta was involved[]
References
- ^ Arrington, Michael (2008-01-02). "The Next Google Search Challenger: Blekko". TechCrunch, 2 January 2008. Retrieved from https://techcrunch.com/2008/01/02/the-next-google-search-challenger-blekko/.
- ^ "Prank starts 25 years of computer security woes". CTV. Associated Press. 2007-08-31. Archived from the original on 2008-01-07.
- ^ "Northwestern University, 131st Annual Commencement, June 17, 1989". 1989.
- ^ Olympia homepage
- ^ USA Today (2007-04-01). "Interview with Topix founder Rich Skrenta". Retrieved 2010-05-22.
- ^ a b Start-Up Blekko Tries to Take On Google The Wall Street Journal, October 31, 2010
- ^ Stealth Search Engine Blekko Gets Money From Marc Andreessen, SoftTech TechCrunch, May 14, 2008
- ^ Wollman, Dana (2010-11-02). "Blekko launches human-driven search engine". News & Record. Associated Press. Retrieved 2010-11-03.
- ^ "Data, Data, Everywhere Data. Now a Better Way to Understand It". IBM. March 27, 2015. Retrieved 2016-02-04.
- ^ Tass threaded newsreader Rich Skrenta's Official Tass Page